A 28-GHz class-J Power Amplifier with 18-dBm output power and 35% peak PAE in 120-nm SiGe BiCMOS

Author

Sarkar, Anirban ; Floyd, Brian

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC, USA

fYear

2014

fDate

19-23 Jan. 2014

Firstpage

71

Lastpage

73

Abstract

A 28-GHz Power Amplifier (PA) designed in 120-nm SiGe BiCMOS for potential use in mobile millimeter-wave phased arrays is presented in this paper. The core of the PA is a cascode amplifier operated in class-J mode. A multi-harmonic load-pull analysis was used to determine the optimum harmonic output impedances (up to third harmonic) resulting in improved efficiency. The PA has a measured 15.3-dB small signal gain, 18.6-dBm saturated output power and 35.3% peak power added efficiency (PAE) at 28GHz. At 1-dB compression the PA has a 15.5-dBm output power and 31.5% PAE.

Keywords

BiCMOS analogue integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; bipolar MMIC; microwave power amplifiers; SiGe; SiGe BiCMOS; cascode amplifier; class-J power amplifier; efficiency 31.5 percent; frequency 28 GHz; gain 15.3 dB; multiharmonic load-pull analysis; optimum harmonic output impedances; power added efficiency; size 120 nm; Broadband communication; Gain; Harmonic analysis; Millimeter wave technology; Power generation; Silicon germanium; Transmission line measurements; Power amplifiers; SiGe; class J; millimeter-wave;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in Rf Systems (SiRF), 2014 IEEE 14th Topical Meeting on

Conference_Location

Newport Beach, CA

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SiRF.2014.6828532

Filename

6828532